From the Outer Darkness

My nose is flat
from leaning up against the windowpane,
wondering what they do in there –
the happy people,
the people who belong.

And how did they get in?
They make it look so easy,
but when I try
I bang against the glass.

Me and the June bugs,
battering against the lighted w

indowpane
and dying to get in.

Dilemma

You’re such an angry

person,
he said, and it was true,
though I denied it.
Anger was my shield, my suit of armor.
When I was mad I didn’t feel the pain,
or not as much.
It warmed me in the cold
of I’m not good enough and no one wants me.
Since I was born I’ve wrapped the warm red coat
of anger round me.

I want to put it off now, lay it down.
I want to live by love, be gentle-hearted.
But gentle hearts are open to the pain
I don’t know how to bear.

Flower Girl

I bring my posies to you, and
you dash them to the ground.
They're nothing but clover;
what did you pick them for?
What kind of imbecile
can't tell the weeds from flowers?

It’s only my heart you’re throwing on the ground.
Don’t let it bother you,
I don’t care really.
It’s only my love I press into your hand.
It’s only my heart you’re crushing to the ground.

Reds in a Black Mask

Give me a cigarette.
Nails in my coffin, Grandma used to call them –
she had some names for me I won't repeat.

I won't repeat them. I've been called some names
even Grandma wouldn't utter.
Give me a cigarette.

For life goes on, I've found, and on and on.
Sentence has been passed – I only lack
an executioner.

Give me another nail; I'm smoking death
and trying to pretend
that God won't mind.

Sisters, Divided

You told me we were friends
but in my secret heart I called you sister,
and sure enough, I had it right.
For certain we’re not friends, not anymore.
Between abandonment and pity
there's little room for friendship.

But still I love you
as if we shared a bond of bone and blood
instead of cups of tea
and endless conversation,
sadness halved and gladness multiplied.

I think I’ll always love you,
for that’s the way with sisters.
Your gravel voice could call me back from death
to say good-night and
see you in the morning.


Internal Injuries

I guess you couldn’t see beneath the shell
of my too-famous strength.
It’s all I’ve ever heard,
how strong I am:
meaning impervious, meaning immune to hurt,
meaning it’s safe to strike at me
because I never crumble.

I never do, only shiver to
smithereens inside my shell.
If you could shake my soul
I’d rattle like maracas,
the brittle slivers of my life
clacking around inside that dratted shell.

Coming into the Homestretch

The best news I know:
I’m fifty-five, I’ll soon be fifty-six.
I’m getting closer, Lord,

to the end of crying
and squirming in the dark
for words I’ve said that
showed me up a fool
to those I love but somehow
can’t get near.
An end to pain is all I really ask.

Oh that’s a lie! I still would ask for joy,
but I would settle
for the end of pain.

Popular Opinion

What will you do then, girl, go
take a poll? Hold an election,
let the people decide
if you should live? Count
how many love you, or despise,
and how many don’t care much
either way. Is that how you can tell
if you are worthy?

A pretty sort of election
that would be. Make it universal
and we'll have no
population problem.

Smiley

I have a smile so wide and bright,
it warms the room.

My dear, you’re looking well –
confident, healthy, glad to be alive.

Healthy, worse luck. One out of three’s
not bad. The smile's a mask
so fine, you'll never see
the misery behind.

Oh Lord, how long, how long?
I walk on broken glass with broken feet.
Until your pity set me loose
I dare not step away.

Don’t count on death
to make away with pain.
Some things hurt
worse than simple agony.

Gravel

If I open my heart to you, what will you do?
Pour gravel in it,
dusty cutting stones,
and turn away?
Because someone did,
a lot of someones did.
I think I’ll keep my heart closed tight:
my loving trust has brought me to the ground.
It’s not that I don’t love you.
I love in fear,
my heart so full of gravel.


Hermit

I've decided I won't go anywhere,
only outside to see the moon at night
and listen to the owls.

But when the sun is just above the hills
I'll ride my bike on sandy roads,
pedaling hard to make it up a rise
and coasting down.

A world so solitary,
cold and safe.


Unless You Become Like Little Children

I'll be eleven when I get to heaven,
or maybe twelve, but not more than thirteen –
that's where I left myself
back when I still believed I had a name.

I have one now, but just because I chose it,
it's not the one I used to think I knew.
I'll be eleven, and I'll know my name,

and roller skate down all the golden pavements
slicker than marble and quicker than a smile.


Wise St. Francis

Sister Death, he named her –
Il Poverino

had the rights of it.
Merciful Sister Death, who calls
me home, who drags me from the fire
that's charring my heart to cinder.
I share his tenderness
for this so gracious sister.


Cold Sober

Don't waste your time in wishing you were dead .
That's one wish will come true,
soon or later.

You needn't do a solitary thing
to make it happen.
But when it does,

what will you wish for then?
What thing undone will dog you?
Go and do it.


After the Fire

How do you bear the pain?
Endure, like rock.
No, rock's too cold and hard -
like earth, then, tramped and tortured into dust,
ignored, forgot,
and weaving every spring
a cloak of living green across the scars
of last year's outrage.

The burnt-out ground
and blackened tree trunks clawing at the sky
trail veils of bittersweet,
and sprigs of infant trees
pop through the ash and flex their springy boughs:
wood winning over fire.


Do You Make Mistakes, Lord?

You could have made somebody else
instead of me.
Someone more talented or lovable,
more pretty and less prone to run to fat,
more charming, funny, someone who knew how
to be with people.

What do I add to earth by being me?
Gnashing my teeth in silent agony,
smiling in public and saying the wrong thing –
I am so weary, weary,
endlessly weary, Lord,
of being me.


Lifeline

If you knew how desperately I need
the reassurance of a tender word,
could you
find your tongue?

I don’t know why it matters, hearing the words –
I’ve heard them all before
and they were lies.

Damn lies and delusional lies,
and little white lies to bridge the awkward moment.
But still I need more words

to tell me I’m okay,
to say I have a foothold on a world
slippery as ice,
to pitch me in the void.


Hope

Despair strikes down like falling in a well
a fathom deep and narrow as a rod.
I can't get
out. Chilled to the core,

hopeless beyond tears, I'm lost
in dreams of death
alone – alone.
A whisper in my mind: there's light
above, a disc of white -
there's daylight still
out there.


Interrogative Sentences

You disappeared and left so many questions
and nobody to answer.
You didn't want a daughter, I know that,
but once I got here, were you a little glad?

And were you really gay,
or was that just another of their lies?
The ones who hated you,
the only ones who ever spoke your name.

And was it an accident or suicide?
Oh, Dad,
you left too many questions.


At Home in the Desert

Bitter water, you can't drink that water –
no thirst can sweeten it.
Baby, you'll be dry, you drink that water!
Pour it out, let it run
in sad futility on forsaken ground
to plump a cactus thornier than you,
if anything can be.
You can't drink that water.


Child Abuse Looks Like This

She wanted a swing,
a wooden board suspended by its ropes,
horse of wonder to carry her away
into the treetops.
And paint it red, please, let the ropes be smooth
against her palms, and she would sail aloft,
hour by hour flying to and fro,
singing the music of her young knees pumping.

Too bad she was so noisy. They took a rope
and hung her by the neck.


Choices

I know I'm not the first one
tempted to turn my face against the wall.
It's been done before
and probably with better reason.
What difference does that make?

Sunlight floods the forest
and dirty snow is melting;
the crows were raucous in this morning's dawn.
All the world's alive and quickening
and I huddle in the dark and cry for death.

A simple case of choices:
Behold I set before you death and life.


High Wire Girl

It takes a toll, pretending to be normal,
saying the right thing -
what is the thing that won't give me away?
Peeking through the eyeholes, seeking clues -
how do you act if your life has not been chaos?
Resist
the kindly question, don't fall in the trap
of letting down my hair,
crying on someone's shoulder,
someone who doesn't hurt from head to heels.

For if I do, they'll take me by the heels
and lay me in the dust.

It's safer to be normal
if only I knew how.


Hitchhiker

Yo Sam, can I walk awhile with you and Frodo?
We seem to all be going the same way,
trekking through dusty Mordor,
the Mountain blasting flame and ash before us
to blind our eyes and fuddle our poor brains.
And you at least know what you’re doing here.

Me, I don’t know, and don’t know how I got here.
What quest is mine to set me on this journey?
If Mordor without hope is very torment,
how when I have no Ring to cast away,
no friend to lead?
Samwise, lend me your hope, be my friend too.

Or can it be my Friend is here beside me,
hid by the Mordor-dark that dims my eyes?
Who sent the Eagles then for you and Frodo,
and maybe too – for me?


Solidarity

I wonder who I would have been,
if I had not been me.
Would I be less clumsy,
all knees and elbows flailing at the world,
my tongue a snare to trip me to the ground?
But maybe I would laugh at dopes like me,
the Wednesday children, born to play the fool
for others' laughter and our own despair.

If I was born to shame, the child unwanted,
at least I hold them tenderly to heart:
the other clowns,
who run with me the gauntlet of disgrace.


Futility

I could stand on a balcony stark naked
screaming to earth and sky, and be invisible,
or at the most,
“Get down,” they’d scoff,
“You self-indulgent fool!”


Undercurrents

I stand here laughing,
hoping the tears have not reached my eyes, hoping
you will not see beneath the smile
or hear me scream.
The woman who ran the bookstore
died last week. Dear God,
you could’ve had me instead.
But I still have a chapter or two to go,
to finish my story of someone else’s healing.


Low on the Totem Pole

Blame finds its way downhill like dirty water
to soak whatever's nearest to the ground.
It rains down on my head and slimes my hair,
shame dripping in my ears,
quiet and deadly, filling my eyes with salt
and etching on my face
an acid rain of tears.


Canyonlands

I think there's more wound than solid to me,
and people say I'm strong! I must be hard as diamonds,
so thin a shell to hold the emptiness.

Pour something in,
a filling of gold or silver – where's the dentist
to fill the gaping cavity in my soul?

Come Holy Spirit – quick - and fill me up,
before I fly apart from the void within.


57 down

So easily knocked so low! It only takes
another birthday passing unremarked.
I'll buy myself a gift
more costly than any you'd have given me,
exactly what I like.
But I can't buy the thing I really want:
to know I'm loved.


Twosome

Do you feel it too?
Like children lost and wandering, we two,
lost and afraid, bewildered at our plight
and holding hands for courage in the night.

But if you told me how you really see me,
could be I wouldn't really want to hear.
You don't guess how bad
I long to turn my face against the wall.


January Inside

Snow come down and cover me, bring your burning frost
and freeze my shame.
I'll try not to shiver, yielding to the cold.
Numbness take me
till a block of ice encase me
never to feel again.


Lurching Through Mordor

You don't exactly walk here,
more like you stumble,
catching your foot on some rough chunk of lava
coughed from the Mountain twenty years ago,
and stagger up all dizzy from the fumes
only to take a header in a pit.

It's getting up that matters,
however many times you have to do it.
Get up, go on, no matter if you seem
to measure your length through Mordor
on the ground.


Relative Time

It's been a long day.
In the shiny morning, light
from the window set the glittering dustmotes
dancing like angels in the quiet room,
and pain came sharp and passed.
At noon-time grief arrived,
a guest who settled in to spend some time.
Now sun is westering, and in the evening cool
I ponder how long a day is. Do we work past dusk,
Into the dark by flickering lights of hope?
I'm tired, Lord. It seems too long a day.


Ah, Ruthie (with tears)

Little adopted mother,
Irish as shamrocks, laughing,
your jokes a wee bit vulgar, but never cruel.
You leapfrogged over the years that yawned between us
to be my confidante, to be my friend.
I leaned on the hope you gave me, the hardest winter,
the darkest night I ever knew.
But when the spring had come,
you punched me in the face and slammed the door.


Re-born Again

Grit my teeth and bear it, bear the pain,
like bearing a daughter in my blood and sweat.
It does no good to wail,
so grab the handles, push her into life.

Who am I birthing here on sorrow's table?
Child of peace that follows on the storm,
child with eyes of pity for a world
too wracked and whacked to suffer all alone,
child of a gentle heart.
A child of God is what I'm birthing here.


Strong Enough

There are so many here:
Mordor is more crowded than I knew.
Samwise is leading Frodo; he won't leave him –
there are too many here who walk alone,
strung out and wounded, fallen in the dust,
with none to help.

Let me be Samwise, Lord, to someone here.
Sam's strong enough to help, for all he staggers,
and so am I.


Call and Response

She's a funny one –
outspoken, irreverent,
uninhibited. You never know
what's going to come out of her mouth.
Outrageous sometimes –
amusing, but you know –

Oh, yes, I know. I take
the inhibitions home
and howl them into my pillow in the dark.


Ergo Nihil

In this living proof
there is one given: whatever I do or say
is incorrect.
Why strain to demonstrate
a competence I never yet have shown
in life or love?
Shut the hopeless book, turn out the light,
for whether I give a curse or an embrace,
in this pitiless mathematics it's all the same.


Enough Yet?


Can I go home now, run away and hide?
I've been a fool for the fifty-millionth time.
That ought to be enough
to sink me below the floor to where there's peace.


Weather Eye

I keep a hopeful eye out
for death, like watching the sky for rain
in a long dry summer.
Cool rain, relief and hope,
soaking the hardpan, churning and frothing it up in velvet mud
to sink my toes in, soothing my burning feet.
A sleep with no awaking, the end of pain.


Abuser in Search of a Substance

I smoked three packs a day when I was young,
and drank a little, never enough
to do me any harm, or good, as the case might be.
I never tried the hard stuff: scared, I guess,
of doing hard time in or out of jail.

And now I'm old enough I should know better,
though better than what you notice they never say.
Old enough to know I won't outgrow it,
whatever "it" is.

I'm looking for something to help me
forget it's never going to be okay. I won't belong
or feel secure or trust my arrant tongue,
that digs me a hole to fall in twice a day.
I'll never feel at home or love a friend
I'm not afraid of losing.

I crave a fix to make me brave and normal,
but is there a drug
that's equal to the task?


Night Tremors

Dinner with friends, a nice convivial evening –
how did it bring me to this cobblestone mattress
with the sky escaping at light-speed into space?

I can't remember what I said
that changed your face and told me I had stumbled.
Casual conversations,
taken for granted by those by those with social grace,
hide pratfalls into hell.

For me there is no casual – every utterance
walks tightrope on disaster.


Scapegoat

There's always blame enough to go around.
You don't have to be stingy, there's enough
to baptize the smallest babe in the family curse.

To make it stop is harder, to dam the lie
that says it's always someone's fault
when everything goes sour.

Can we all concede that life is just inherently unfair?
Let's cast the blame on God –
He's got the only shoulders that can bear it.


Just Outside of Eden

Paradise on earth is relative:
it harbors snakes and scorpions
and other politicians.
You gamble with disaster
just stepping out in the cancer-causing rays
through shadows ripe with fear.
But mercy dwells here too, hugging the interstice
where hope and anguish meet.


Only a Touch Reclusive

If I could build, I'd have a little hovel
deep in the woods, like Baba Yaga's house,
on chicken legs that bowed to take me in,
and there I would be safe.
No one would see me; no one would come near;
I'd talk to myself, and never a word I said
would rise like a zombie at midnight to make me groan.
I'd drink my cup of loneliness unmixed
with self-contempt.


I'll Take the Depression, Thanks, and Skip the Booze

I take my pain how I find it.
A sturdy jolt of anguish comes with the territory
along with love and music,
the taste of chocolate, laughter,
frog-song and the flash of eagle's wings.

There will be agony. Knock it back straight,
for anything you add to kill the taste
will burn a path more stringent than the pain,
into your very core.


Like an Oyster

The daily pricking of small agonies
and some that aren't so small,
and flies in the ointment
and phantoms that stand at the end of my bed
and gloat, at three a.m.,
the nights I cannot sleep:

I raise against them all
the power of language (where is my thesaurus?)
binding words of truth and pain and hope
around the caltrops strewn in my path,
and turn them into poems.


Trade-off

The great thing about depression is,
you hurt so bad you're not afraid to die.

And when you start to heal,
you find out
what the fuss was all about.

Just like for someone normal,
death gets a little scary.